


A Happy Time

by pseudocitrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-05 16:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: 1. Dimitri, when he loses and finds her.2. Sensei’s first smile.3. How she does, and doesn't, feel.





	1. Lost

**Author's Note:**

> hmmm it's been months since i've written something! in the time since i've last written something tumblr has imploded so i'll probably post my fics here from now on if any more happen to come out! this is just a small thing & i feel like i don't know what i'm doing anymore, but i love fire emblem!
> 
> ideally i'll keep having ideas and update this now and then.
> 
> note — even though it's a japanese word, i decided to keep "Sensei" as what Dimitri calls Byleth, only because i prefer it to the english "Professor" used in the same way ///

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri, when he loses and finds her.

That first day.

That first night.

After he couldn’t find her.

What remained of his bruised body churned with torrential horror. He paced and refused medicine and he fell into sleep only when he couldn’t fight it any longer, his eye shut, he fell swiftly into the darkness and fell out of it the next morning, with a jolt. On that day and for many days afterward, he woke and woke and woke with a hope so huge and desperate he had room for nothing else.

“I didn’t see her.” He kept repeating it. He refused food; he had no room for it. “I didn’t see her. I didn’t see her.”

“Your Highness,” Dedue had murmured, and at first he could say nothing further. When finally the day arrived that Dedue took a thin breath to continue, Dimitri turned away, and abruptly found the energy to lift a slab of fallen monastery wall and tip it over to make a crash almost loud enough to drown Dedue out.

“Sensei is —”

“Stop.”

“Sensei —”

“No —”

“Your Highness.” For the first time, Dedue's voice had an edge, a dagger's glint. He moved his body between Dimitri and the crushed rubble and forced their eyes to meet.

“You’re shaking,” Dedue said. “You need to rest.”

“It’s nothing — I’m just — a little cold.”

“Your Highness —”

“Don’t,” Dimitri whispered. “Please...please help me.”

Dedue was so much stronger than him. Surely he could — he could —

Dedue took a deep breath. Dimitri moved, to give him space, but Dedue had only been preparing to speak.

“You told me once that for the people of Faergus, a knife is one of the greatest gifts,” Dedue said. “I didn't understand this fully. You explained to me that it is because the sharpness of this weapon can bestow upon someone the power to cut a path through to their future. Your Highness, I hope you understand, then, why I must say to you something which on its surface may seem like it is intended only to cut you and cause you pain.”

“You don't understand,” Dimitri cried. His vision was blurring. Tears burst down his face, soaked the bandage on his right eye; the salt of them lanced his scrapes and gouges and still the pain of it paled in comparison to this, to how badly he needed Dedue to understand. “I haven't — I haven't seen her, so —”

“We've all been searching for her,” Dedue said. “And no one has seen her. Your Highness, it's time to consider —”

“No, it's — it's in my dreams that I haven't seen her —”

Dedue blinked. Dimitri pushed on.

“Everyone who dies, I see them again. But — but Sensei —”

Sensei hadn’t yet joined the quiet frigid weight on his back, the silhouettes that crowded his periphery by day and by night settled heavily onto his chest, gripping his heart with their whispers, their pleading for him to give them peace. He had lost Sensei, he realized too late that she was someone he could lose, he reached through the forest of their scraping fingers as hard and far as he could and it was the only time he was relieved not to find her. He searched and searched. He stammered.

“She — she hasn't come to see me, and if she’s not there, it means she’s alive. She is alive.”

Somewhere on the bloodied fields. Somewhere under the stone. Somewhere on this earth, waiting for him, needing him. And Dimitri would make up for one less eye by searching twice as hard as —

“Your Highness,” Dedue said. “She is dead.”

:::

He couldn’t bear to hear it. He only shook his head, and repeated it: “I haven’t seen her.”

Soon, of course, Dedue had nothing more to say to him. Except, _“Avenge me.”_

And eventually, of course, even the most blind of hopes can shrivel. And it was then, finally, that she appeared.

:::

He often overheard the laments of those like him.

_ “I can't even remember they looked like, anymore —” _

Their faces. Their smiles. Their voices, lost to time, lost to simple human vagary.

It wasn’t so with him. He remembered everything. All those that departed left him even more hollow, and in the emptiness his memories had room to echo in relentless peals:

His father calling out that it was cold, and summoning servants to give him gloves.

Dedue washing the monastery rubble and grit from his fingernails and re-bandaging his numb and bloodied hands, again.

He recalled Sensei too, even though she had deigned to stay far away from him. Somehow, sometimes, when he closed his eyes, a wraith of her hands appeared alongside the rest — different, distant — a memory of a peculiar day when sunlight caught along her bare and slender fingers, or maybe it was the other way around, that she had caught the light herself.

Wherever it was she grew up wasn’t a place like Faergus, a country so cold and rugged it was easiest to survive by becoming more like it. Even now the cacophony of his memories refuse him any vision of a time anyone simply took his hands in theirs, gently, and so when it happens now, when she removes one of his gloves and slips the ring onto his finger, something hard in him thaws. His vision blurs. Tears burst down his face, soak the patch on his right eye; the salt of them lance his scrapes and gouges and still the pain of it pales in comparison to this, to how badly he needs her to understand.

“They’re warm,” he says. His voice staggers; he can’t muster the strength for anything stronger than a whisper. He removes his other glove; he takes her hands in his and with some measure of indulgence frames them around his face. She smiles. He watches her, and then, finally, he closes his eye.

“Crying again,” she murmurs. “And shaking.”

“It’s...nothing. I’m just...a little cold.”

“Oh?” And she circles her thumbs over his cheeks, smearing the tears trailing there, over and over, until finally he is warm enough to smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! ♡


	2. Ideal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sensei’s first smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmm i love a super melty crushy dimitri!! soo!! much!!
> 
> sometimes i like to follow exactly how the lines and scenes in the game go & sometimes i’d rather be self-indulgent 😬💧✨ (not to mention i’m in the middle of my yellow run anyway & can’t clearly remember how it all happens...)

He was wrong, assuming no one would ever match Dedue’s stoicism. Even after rescuing Dedue from the aftermath of the Duscur Tragedy, Dimitri received gratitude not in smiles or obvious kindnesses but in quiet: in the firm, certain presence of Dedue at his back, as the single close shadow he felt relieved to have. (Compared to the other shadows — the secret, cold ones — the ones he would never speak of even when Dedue spotted him jolt at odd moments and call, "Your Highness?")

But, Dedue had his moments of emotion. He didn’t hide his fury at any enemy of Dimitri’s. And despite what had happened in the past, and the hackles Dimitri knew were bared at him when not in Dimitri's presence, Dedue's smiles came easily as long as the topics involved flowers, or spices.

Sensei, on the other hand.

He had mistaken the grace and authority of their first meeting as something she carried always, and realized too late her eyes only shone when her sword caught the light. When her weapons were sheathed...she...

Was a little different.

“...Cats,” she said finally, and Dimitri waited, and then furrowed his brow.

“...Cats? What about them?”

She blinked at him, and then looked away. She sighed, so lightly that after a moment Dimitri wondered if he had just imagined it.

He waited for her to continue, and they sat in silence a while. Dimitri poured them both more tea, glad at least that it was chamomile, soothing enough that he didn’t mind just listening to the chirping birds and the low drumming wingbeats of knights making their routes overhead.

_Even though she’s my age — probably — I guess we don’t have much to say to each other._

Which was fine. It’s not like he needed a house teacher to be a fantastic conversation partner. All he really needed was someone who was —

“How about,” Sensei said, “the ideal professor?”

It was so unexpected that he laughed, and then stopped abruptly when she merely continued watching him without any expression. Was she...she was serious?

“I didn’t expect that you would want to know my thoughts on something like that, Sensei.”

She always took a moment to answer, as if weighing her options.

“This is...not something I ever expected to find myself doing,” she said, waving her hand. She never wore gloves outside of battle and her hands were by far the most expressive part of her. When she sipped her tea next Dimitri kept watching her. Her fingers were covered in the shine of calluses, little scars. She cradled her teacup like a mug.

She continued. “I wonder sometimes if I’m doing well by you. All of you, I mean. If it turns out that the way I’ve been instructing you isn’t the best for helping you exceed in your personal strengths...it’s not exactly an easy thing to just redo.”

“Not easy?” Dimitri echoed, with a light smile. “More like impossible, right?”

“...right. Impossible.”

It had been cruel, probably, for him to assume this whole time that behind her blank face was an equally blank heart.

They drank again. Dimitri poured again. The weather had been gray for a while, but had broken today, into sunshine and blue. In the distance, he heard laughter from the Officer’s Academy, and the sound of platters and silverware rattling and chiming in the dining hall, and even the clipping hoofbeat of horses being led across the stables. It was a peaceful day, made all the more strangely lovely for spending it drinking tea with his inexplicable mercenary-turned-professor. For a moment, for an instant, he considered her question so thoroughly that the only shadows around him were cast by foliage and chatting passerby.

“An ideal professor...cares about their students excelling in their strengths,” Dimitri said. “Most importantly, the ideal professor will lead their students to victory in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.”

He hoped she would smile then, but she didn’t. She looked into the distance, eyes narrowing. Thinking. About what? He meant it with levity but she seemed to take it extremely seriously. He found himself smiling, again.

“Sensei,” Dimitri called, and she blinked. “I would just like to thank you for...this. I can’t remember the last time I was invited to tea, much less how long it has been since I indulged in a nice, relaxing conversation…”

“Of course.” She sipped her tea. That was the most he’d ever get from her, probably — but maybe that was just her way. It felt good to learn she cared about them, despite what he’d expected. He could stand to be a little more like that himself, focused on the needs of others in his class, his kingdom. Who cared if she was stoic? It’s not like he needed a house teacher to be as flirty and charming as a dancer. All he really needed was someone who was...dedicated to helping him become better.

He filled her cup again, and they sat together until the pot was empty.

:::

He was wrong, though, assuming nothing would ever come from her expression.

After the Battle, exhausted as they all were, her guard, or her discipline, or — or whatever — slackened. When she turned to him she was smiling, and he was stunned, he stopped in his tracks.

“S-Sensei,” he stammered.

“Yes?” Her smile widened. Even then, frankly, the curve of her mouth was so light that the average person could be forgiven for wondering if they just imagined it, but such a change in her demeanor felt to Dimitri like a fissure, a break in a ceaseless gray sky. She was beaming.

_It’s not her hands after all,_ he thought, _that are the most expressive, but rather —_

She was waiting for him to continue. They had been standing in silence a while, he realized.

“Thank...you,” he managed.

“Of course,” she said. And then she said, “What else would an ideal professor do?”

“What?” His laugh was strained. “I...can’t really think of anything.”

A lie. Suddenly he was thinking about a lot of things. Like — her slender fingers — her lips and — whether she was teasing him — Sensei — _teasing_? Or was she serious? What did a smile mean, from her? Was this really happening? If Dedue was here — he could confirm, but then it would mean — someone else would see her like this — which should be fine — which _would_ be fine. What was he thinking?

She was watching him. Waiting. Her eyes were always sharp enough to catch flaws in their posture and how they gripped weapons and he was certain she could see every drop of sweat rolling off him. Time was ticking. _Say something_, he begged himself. Something about — repairing their equipment, or the new maneuvers they’d tried, or —

“Cats,” he blurted finally, and she waited, and then tilted her head onto her hand.

“...Cats? What about them?”

After all the blankness, even her small frown was sort of —

“Nothing. Sorry. Nothing. What I mean is...” He made himself clear his throat, take a breath.

“What I mean is...let’s go eat.”

“Eat? You and me?”

“No,” Dimitri said, and then grimaced. “Well, maybe later — I’d be happy to — if you want, of course — but what I meant was —”

He was running out of breath so quickly. He took another deep one. “Let’s...let’s go to the feast. With everyone.”

“Ah, right,” she said. “What kind of an ideal professor doesn’t show up to their own house’s victory feast?”

He didn't trust himself to respond to that one. For some reason he held up his arm for her to take it, but he quickly put it down again, and luckily she didn't see it, or else saw it and didn't have the kind of upbringing that knew what to do with it.

Probably it was just that she didn't see it, because she was still smiling, and looking up. At the — sky? The setting sun? He tried to follow her gaze, and she noticed.

“I was just thinking how happy I am,” she admitted, softly. “I've never...lived like this. I hope we can be together for a long while. Though I suppose by the end of the year we'll all be parting ways again.”

“Right...all of us.” He made himself breathe, again. Finally, he made himself smile at her, genuinely. “But you're jumping ahead too far, Sensei. There's still the entire rest of the year. Let's enjoy it together.”

She shut her eyes, and tipped her head back against a breeze. “Well said. You know, I’m glad that it’s this class I get to teach this year, and that I have someone like you to help guide me. You're an ideal student, Dimitri."

He’d never felt his face this warm. He was glad she was still gazing at the sunset, and not seeing him melt into the ground. “Thank...thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! ♡


	3. Fondness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How she does, and doesn't, feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shippy off-canon-ness continues 🙈

Sothis slept, usually. But there were times that she woke, and said nothing, and it would only be later that Byleth knew Sothis had been observing, when she said yawned something unnecessary like, “Hmm. That tea conversation was terrible.”

Or, with an aggravated sigh: “Why do you waste so much time returning everyone’s trash?”

Or, even, with a little snicker: “Hmm! It looks like the prince is fond of you.”

“I hope all of them are, by now,” Byleth replied. She was joking, something she knew she get away with sparingly. She waved at a pair of students passing by and waited until they were out of earshot before she continued. “I did just help them win the Eagle and Lion Battle.”

“The Battle of the Eagle and Lion,” Sothis corrected. “And I mean more than being merely appreciative. Honestly. I know it’s taken you a lot of time to get to know all these little students, but are you really so ignorant of how people act in general?”

“Since when are you a master at understanding ‘how people act in general?’” Byleth asked back.

More students approached. They stopped to congratulate her and chat, and Sothis grew silent and probably (Byleth hoped) dozed off again. But the moment she entered her quarters, Sothis’s presence fluttered up to the usual place, reclining in the air beside the bed.

“So? What are you going to do about it?”

“About what?”

“Did you truly forget?” She rolled her eyes. “The _prince_. And those feelings of his.”

“Don’t ignore me,” Sothis snapped, when Byleth, instead of responding, began to undress and prepare for sleep.

“I’m not ignoring you,” Byleth sighed. “I just...don’t know what to say.”

She just...had no words that came to mind.

“Well,” Sothis said. “Do you feel any fondness toward him yourself?”

“Of course,” Byleth said. “He’s my student.”

Sothis pursed her lips. “Sometimes I forget you’re just a child like the rest of them.”

:::

Fondness.

She knew what Sothis actually meant. Logically, she understood part of what...“fondness” should feel like — something like “wanting to spend time with someone,” and “wanting them to live happily.” And she truly felt that way for everyone. She’d seen almost every student of hers take a lance or arrow or axe to the heart and she didn’t stop cutting and pulsing time until she could make it through with every single one of them beside her. It was well-known amongst her class that after their battles she preferred to pass out, exhausted from her secret days of endless reworking. Nowadays, she even awoke from her post-mission sleeps always with a small mug of tea on her bedside table.

Presently, she reached for it and held it in her hands. It was chamomile, and it was still hot, which meant Dimitri had spent at least a little time on his own learning some kind of magic, despite the fact he had recently announced his desire to focus on swords and lances. She carried the tea to class, sipping, and when she reached her desk, she looked up and spotted Dimitri at his usual spot in the front row. He was staring at the mug in her hand, and then he glanced up at her face, and she found herself smiling at him, and he smiled back.

“Hmph,” Sothis said, and, thankfully, said nothing else, though she piped up again later, when Byleth's usual explorations turned up a hunting dagger that she kept and gave to Dimitri after the next time they had tea together.

“A knife! As a present! And he liked it. Unbelievable.”

“I don't know why you keep commenting on this,” Byleth muttered, after she and Dimitri parted ways.

“‘Keep?’ I've mentioned it all of twice!”

“I give all my students gifts. I invite all of them to tea, too.”

“Ah! Are you...arguing?” Sothis laughed. “Very well. Certainly, you are a kind and generous professor to both your own students, those of other houses, and even that strange gatekeeper man. You even smile now, to a variety of people. But my main evidence isn't related to any of that.”

She waited, dramatically, until Byleth muttered: “What evidence?”

“Simply this: you have never had to use my power to change his fate.” Sothis's smile was triumphant, even as Byleth said: “How could that be evidence?”

Sothis huffed. “Because. Must I really explain this?”

“Not if you don't want to,” Byleth said mildly.

Sothis quieted. Then she continued, as expected.

“You're careful with him, on the battlefield.”

Byleth frowned. “I ask him to engage all the time. Sometimes I send him to the most difficult of opponents.”

“Yes. But never to one you’re not certain he will overcome.”

“He's strong. He can overcome most of our enemies in general.”

Sothis sighed.

“I don't feel more than simple fondness,” Byleth insisted.

“How are you so certain?” Sothis asked. “You barely had even one emotion before we arrived here. It's not like you're some kind of expert.”

“Because...”

Though they usually spoke aloud to each other to communicate, whatever strange bond existed between them also allowed the exchange of things not formed with words. Byleth summoned a memory — old, but clear — an evening when Jeralt had finally returned from a long job one day not with new equipment for her as usual but something else: a book, which he handed over with a mixture of amusement and sheepishness. _“Maybe you'll like this.”_

It took her a single day to go from the fraught beginning, through the whirlwind euphoria of early love, to the end: marriage, a wedding, perfect contentment and happiness, peacetime blessed by the blending of two noble bloodlines.

_“What did you think?”_ Jeralt asked after, and she had hesitated. Maybe he was hoping, as usual, that some gift of his would make her face light. But she just...had no words that came to mind. Nothing she could use to voice what she actually felt, which she could convey to Sothis perfectly.

Everything described in this book, and in every other like it that she found and desperately skimmed — a drumming heart, a warming face, a swelling feeling in her heart so deep and overflowing her eyes began to well...

She knew her own nature, even without others commenting on it. _“Emotionless. Blank.”_ She doubted she would ever feel any of these things.

And she still didn't, now.

Byleth felt the weight of her own shame tug her heart downward, and wondered if Sothis felt it the same way. Maybe she did, because she sighed, heavily.

“You expect too much from yourself,” she murmured.

“It’s just fondness,” Byleth repeated.

“If you say so.” Sothis turned away. “I’m going to take a nap.”

And they never spoke of it again.

:::

At the time, to not have her stooping and hounding was a relief.

But now.

_ Sothis. _

Byleth’s breath is short. In her mind she feels herself reach back, back, back — and finding no one, nothing, nothing. The world spins — her heart drops — she almost loses her footing, as surely as if she had expected one more step at the top of a staircase and found only air. She almost screams it aloud.

_ Sothis! _

_ What happened? Who is this? _

“Sensei,” the figure mutters. Its voice is low. “I knew you would come to me one day. Who was it, Sensei? Just tell me. I’ll kill them. I’ll avenge you. I won’t stop until I smother their last breath myself.”

_ It can't be._

She stares at — at Dimitri — it is Dimitri. He never was able to hold her gaze for long — just yesterday she caught his eyes briefly and watched him quickly look away — but now he just stares straight at her. His single uncovered eye is dark, and cold. A glint of ice only just visible through his ragged hair.

Something happened to him. She wasn’t careful. She blinked and lost him and he — was overcome —

Her heart. It seizes — kicks in her chest — swells, rises, rises, and her throat clenches into a knot, to try and keep back whatever is about to escape from it and run amok. Her breath staggers.

_ Sothis. I need to go back. I can’t let this happen to him. _

She reaches, back, back, back —

Back to five years ago, where she can stop herself from falling into the darkness, so she can stay with him, so she can guard his right eye —

Or — or back even further — back to when she started as a teacher, and maybe she can instruct him differently, make him strong enough to meet whatever enemy shattered him while she wasn’t beside him —

Or back even further, further, to the Tragedy of Duscur, where she could stop it all from happening to him, everything, every bad thing that made him this shadow of a human who jerks his head up with an animal growl and rises jaggedly to his feet, using his bloodied lance to keep his balance.

“I’m happy to see you, Sensei. You’re...exactly as I remember after all.” Dimitri is so tall, huge, even stooped over the stained sword. The furs on his cape wave in the chill wind, and when he speaks his fractured voice completes the image of a feral lion greedy for blood. “Let’s go together. It will be like old times. I’ve become pretty good without you, you know, and with the two of us it will be easy. We’ll flush them out of their nest and kill all of them, every single filthy thieving rat.” He smiles, without humor or warmth. “Won’t that make you happy, Sensei?”

She blinks, hard.

_ Sothis. Sothis. I need to go back. _

Back to their last battle. Back to the one before that. Back to their last conversation. To the Garreg Mach Ball, where she would dance with him, or back to the last time they drank tea, or the first time, where she would ask all the right things this time, she would buy a dagger every month to give him, she would open herself to everything of those days she only realizes now were something she could lose, the sunset and their silly pleasant chatter and his gentle voice and easy laugh and she would try to keep every detail that even now is fading away into a world that she...

Can’t...

Reach.

_Sothis. _Byleth’s cries echo back and forth across the new hollow inside her. Her heart is drumming. Her face is warming. There’s a swelling feeling in her chest so deep and overflowing that her eyes begin to well.

_ Sothis, you were right. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! ♡


End file.
